Activision Claims Guitar Hero’s Not Dead, Just Sleeping

Remember how there was much weeping, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the demise of Guitar Hero? Hell, there was even a great YouTube clip to the tune of Don McLean’s “American Pie”, which Twitter user @TheSchroeder says was inspired by the headline of my GH obituary (The Day the Music Died: Activision Kills “Guitar Hero” Franchise)

But recent comments by Activision exec Dan Winters to GamesIndustry.biz seem to indicate that there may be more Guitar Hero games on the way:

“Actually, just to clarify, we’re just putting Guitar Hero on hiatus, we’re not ending it. We’re releasing products out of the vault – we’ll continue to sustain the channel, the brand won’t go away. We’re just not making a new one for next year, that’s all.”

So, if I’m reading Winters’ comments correctly, the time-extend on the GH franchise amounts to a few games that they never saw fit to release when the series–and the music game market–was still viable. One must wonder what makes them think that the games will sell now. Guess we should just update Guitar Hero‘s status to undead, then?

Winters’ statements about True Crime: Hong Kong–the other big, cancelled game that was due from Activision Blizzard–make it seem that, while they thought it was going to be good, it didn’t seem like it was going to be good enough to make heaping piles of money. The company’s focus seems to be on mega-franchises, either the ones that already exist like the Call of Duty games or ones on the way like the upcoming game from Halo creators Bungie, or the interactive toy relaunch of Spyro the Dragon. It remains to be seen what these Guitar Hero games from the vault actually are but, if Activision wants to resurrect the franchise, eventually they’re going to have to invest in new versions of the Guitar Hero model.